As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an Information Handling System (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, global communications, etc. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
In the field of Information Technology (IT), the Common Information Model (CIM) is an open standard that defines how networked IHS devices are managed and represented. The CIM standard enables management of IHS devices, as well as other types of resources such as network and/or storage devices, independently of their manufacturer or provider. Customers may use a management console or application, which is itself hosted by an IHS, to communicate with and manage other IHSs and/or resources through the network using a CIM protocol, such as, for example, the Web Services-Management (WS-Man) protocol.
The inventors hereof have recognized that customers who use management consoles or applications would like to have network resources used efficiently by those tools, and a responsive console that takes the shortest amount of time possible to poll or inventory resources. Unfortunately, the inventors hereof have also determined that the CIM-based WS-Man protocol is particularly verbose in its payload, especially compared with other protocols such as the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) or the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI). Therefore, the inventors hereof have recognized a need to optimize CIM-type communications, especially when employing the WS-Man protocol.